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25 TH ANNIVERSARY

Management system certification in Brazil

The certification of quality management systems began in Brazil in the same way as in the rest of the world, with big companies using their own quality management models and requiring their suppliers to fit to those models. That was the second party certification activity that lasted until 1990. With the publication of the ISO9000 series in 1987 the third party certification took place in the market. In Brazil, this movement started in 1990 when Inmetro, the state owned accreditation body, stopped doing the certification by itself. Fundação Carlos Alberto Vanzolini, FCAV, a foundation linked to the University of São Paulo, was the first entity to be accredited to do third party quality management systems certification in 1990. This started the growth of this market in strong competition with many foreign companies that came to this country attracted by the existing big business potential. According to the last ISO Survey the ISO 9001 management systems certification in Brazil in 2014 reached the total of 18,201 certificates with a fall of 17.7% concerning the numbers of 2013. In part this is due to the partial information given by the certification bodies in Brazil to ISO Survey and part due to the loss of attractiveness of the certification to the companies. The extensive action of a class of certification bodies nicknamed “cowboys” was one of the main reasons to that loss of interest. With the recent economic crisis in Brazil we can expect that the number of certificates have another fall in 2015. The presence of IQNet in Brazil, with the admission of our country member FCAV in 1998, has contributed to improve credibility to the management system certifications. The share of experiences and knowledge in between the members leads to a culture of high quality certification services in Brazil. Pioneers in that cooperation with FCAV were DQS from Germany and DS from Denmark. FCAV shared this knowledge with many others countries in Latin America, in particular with Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Mexico. From these countries Argentina soon got its full membership followed after some years by Mexico. Nowadays we have a strong cooperation both bilateral and multilateral also with Colombia and Venezuela. Presently, many IQNet member bodies operate in Brazil, all of them in accordance with our association code of ethics and offering a menu of products including training courses and specific scheme certification as SA 8000. The local market perspectives are indicating that special products will be the future with better profit margins and low competition. For the traditional management systems certification, we have 50 certification bodies with local accreditation in the country that implies in a very strong competition and low prices and low service levels. FCAV is looking forward to offering to its clients and partners at IQNet innovative products such as the AQUA certification process for green buildings, which is a leading product in the civil construction area. We understand that IQNet membership was a strategy that made possible the position of FCAV as a major player in the Brazilian market alongside with the big foreign certification bodies that are operating here. We believe that the 2015 economic crisis is temporary and the huge Brazilian market is still worthwhile.